AI will create a permanent underclass

Market forces will make adoption go faster and faster and, unless we intervene, there will be fewer good jobs available and the benefits will accrue to a small group.

Foundational models are built and controlled elsewhere. Left to drift, the benefits concentrate where capability already sits, while the risks of job displacement, biased systems, extracting of data for value generation, and new dependencies fall on those least able to absorb the…

If left solely to market forces, AI will naturally evolve around the world's largest languages, leaving many communities on the margins of the AI economy.

As AI tools become more widespread, the U.S. labor market is forming a polarization: the gap between those who can harness AI and those who cannot will create a permanent underclass.

Tech billionaires, by contrast, openly anticipate the rise of a semi-permanent underclass as advanced systems eliminate tens of millions of jobs, concentrating wealth and power in the hands of existing capital holders and AI companies.

The single most serious risk companies face if they significantly eliminate entry-level jobs in favour of AI is the weakening of the talent and succession pipeline needed to sustain future growth. Many organizations are already grappling with talent scarcity and succession challe…

The most serious risk is that an organization's talent quietly stops evolving. Entry-level roles are not simply a cost line; they are an engine of renewal. When young people work alongside experienced colleagues, something more than knowledge transfer seems to come from that inte…

Many companies are tempted to eliminate entry-level roles in favour of AI, to drive immediate productivity gains. They reason, not incorrectly, that much of the rote work that’s done by junior employees can be easily automated. But this short-term perspective overlooks a critical…

The social impact of removing the entry level is like removing the staircase connecting the ground and second floors of a building, while expecting the rest of the floors to remain populated and relevant. When the path and number of good jobs narrow, the impact will fall unevenly…

We have a short window of opportunity to shape the AI revolution so that it enhances and supports jobs, rather than destroying and undermining them, and it is right that government are bringing employers and unions together to think through these issues. Some of the most exposed …

Once the machine can perform the new task as well as a person, there is no longer any reason to keep a human in the loop.

AI and humanoid robots break that logic because they are general-purpose. Yes, the disruption will create new jobs. The problem is that AI and robots will be able to do those new jobs too.

We are not looking at another Industrial Revolution; labor itself becomes optional for the economy.

There’s only a matter of time before GPT-7 comes out and eats all software and you can no longer build a software company. Or the best version of Tesla Optimus comes out and can perform all physical labor as well. In that world, this year is a human’s last chance to be a part of …

They haven't taken our music so that they can use our music … They're making something so that we can be obsolete.

One of the things we talk about as sociologists who study work is this idea about work moving from the career to the job to the gig. And AI makes it even easier to do that.

Most economists will acknowledge that technological progress can cause some adjustment problems in the short run. What is rarely noted is that the short run can be a lifetime.

Workers should not be the test subjects or casualties of unchecked automation, nor should AI give employers a blank check to surveil workers, replace human judgment with unaccountable algorithms, or eliminate jobs while shifting the costs onto workers and communities.

There’s a common fear among people who work in Silicon Valley: snag one of the fast-growing, high-paying jobs in artificial intelligence, or get trapped in the “permanent underclass”, a phrase describing the fate of those who won’t have upward mobility in the age of AI. The phras…

We need to take action now to protect against AI’s potentially disastrous effects: millions of layoffs, a huge increase in economic inequality, and the creation of a large, new underclass.

AI use is also very shallow, with the average worker using it for only 21% of tasks, with less than 10% of Gemini interactions seemingly geared at automating non-routine cognitive work.

AI is bringing a massive evolution in the world of work, but a job apocalypse is not on the horizon. It’s more about changing roles and tasks than eliminating jobs.

But the doomsday case rests on a flawed arithmetic: If AI can do 40 percent of a job’s tasks, then 40 percent of the work must go. But a job is not a to-do list of separable chores.

The bigger trend is tasks being replaced with AI rather than jobs.

The report does not conclude that AI will lead to mass unemployment. The evidence is more nuanced. Labor market effects are better understood through tasks, new work creation, and job quality.

AI can accelerate medical breakthroughs. Transform education. Strengthen food systems and agricultural productivity. Spur new industries and create decent jobs.

Five years from now, I believe AI will create more jobs than it eliminates.

We're not expecting that displaced workers will be displaced over the long run. We do expect that ultimately there are going to be more than enough jobs created to reabsorb workers back into the labor market.

People talk about AI reducing jobs — complete nonsense. It’s causing more software engineers to be hired, and the reason for that is very simple. [...] If you can hire a software engineer and you could generate $9 trillion worth of productive work, why wouldn’t you want to hire m…

Of course AI will absolutely eliminate some tasks and compress some roles, but the claim that AI will produce economy-wide, permanent unemployment is unhelpful marketing, bad economics and worse history. [...] The future is cheaper intelligence, bigger markets, new firms, new ind…

Technological progress has created more jobs than it has destroyed.

There is zero evidence of job losses because of AI.

Right now, we are not seeing evidence of large-scale AI-related layoffs in California’s labor market. But we do see patterns in certain regions like the Bay Area, in certain tech-heavy sectors, and among highly AI-exposed workers with college degrees. It will be important to cont…

AI adoption remains focused on productivity and revenue gains, not explicitly on head count reduction. Among enterprise AI objectives, process efficiency (64%) and employee productivity (59%) are much more commonly prioritized than head count reduction (24%). Job cuts remain a se…

Despite concerns of AI-driven job losses, a new study from JLL finds that a majority of senior business leaders expect their workforces to grow (60%), not shrink (40%) – similarly, most expect AI to reinvent human roles (60%), rather than replace them (40%).

So for all the talk about the AI jobs apocalypse, there is simply no strong evidence from either economic history or current economic data that such a thing is happening.

With the right skills, workers stand to benefit from emerging job opportunities created by AI, provided the risks are addressed in tandem.

Harnessing the benefits of GenAI requires more than access to technology. Productivity gains depend on investments in human capital and social protection. Ultimately, future labour market outcomes will depend less on exposure alone than on the policy choices to build the prepared…

AI alone will not create divides. As with any human creation, it can concentrate power or it can distribute opportunities.

The future of work will not be determined by technology alone, but by the policies, institutions and social dialogue that guide it.

We cannot slow down the development of AI. But we will not leave its outcomes to chance. We will work hard to secure a different deal, between the companies that prosper here and the workers whose effort makes that prosperity possible. Where companies benefit from operating and g…

Though a “permanent underclass” is not an imminent reality, in the near term AI could make some people richer and others worse off.

There is no evidence to date of broad AI-driven labour-market upheaval in Australia. The evidence is best read as an early indication of some modest slowing in employment growth in some highly exposed occupations, not proof of large AI-driven job loss.

Overall, while the consequences of AI for aggregate employment to date remain inconclusive, the analysis finds that it has had a relative impact on US employment growth since 2019.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having a profound impact on the UK economy and labour market, but the speed of adoption and exactly how it will affect employment is still uncertain.

We must be intentional and make collective, democratic choices, rather than letting market forces play out and risking leaving most citizens behind.

AI could create significant unemployment if humans do not adapt fast enough; it could create malign new forms of inequality too.

But at the same time we should recognize that there’s a decent possibility that, despite all our efforts, AI still causes significant enduring job loss—and that this may be an intrinsic property of the technology and the way it broadly replicates human cognition.

In the future, it is true that there is a scenario in which there is mass unemployment. But it is also true that when there have been huge upheavals previously, labour markets have adapted, albeit over time, and sometimes it is that gap that makes the difference.

Under one plausible theory of technological development, artificial intelligence will turn the economy into a dystopian split screen. As AI becomes capable of replacing an ever larger share of human work, the companies selling it will grow astronomically, turning a handful of inv…

AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years. This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as w…

AI and related technologies will transform whole sectors of the economy. It will both disrupt and create. It will disrupt existing jobs, but also create new jobs.

For now, AI is not (yet) destroying jobs at scale. Even in advanced economies, only a small share of roles currently face a high risk of full automation. Instead, AI is reshaping how work is organised, who benefits, and who is left behind.

Employees are being told AI will transform the way they work, yet many have received little training on how to use it effectively, securely or confidently. The people who are most confident with AI will continue to build skills and productivity, while others risk being left behin…

Still, he fears AI’s potential to undercut wages, increase unemployment, and immiserate young people, particularly the ones who pay a fortune for a useless college degree.